On entering prison Gandhi felt immense relief as it was for him an opportunity to escape from the turmoil of politics. To him it was an act of "God's infinite mercy", and when Patel and Mahadev Desai joined him, they became, as Gandhi said, "a merry company" and were "practically enjoying ourselves".(1) As we shall see, immediately after arrest, Gandhi, in his appeals to the Viceroy and the Secretary of State, assured them of his co-operation and desire to restore `peace'.
The people were not as fortunate as their leaders. They found themselves in the midst of a situation for which they had not been prepared. Rather, they had been lulled into complacency when the raj carried out the threat "to hit hard and hit at once". What D.A. Low called "civil martial law" -- martial law under a civil cloak -- was imposed. A bunch of ordinances poured out of the raj's armoury to add to those which were already in force in the NWFP, Bengal and U.P. To quote Michael Brecher, "Together they gave the Government of India powers even more far-reaching than those of 1930 which Lord Irwin's biographer had termed `this catalogue of absolutism'." As Hoare admitted in the House of Commons, they were "very drastic and severe. They cover almost every activity of Indian life". The Congress and various other organizations including peasant associations and youth organizations were banned, large-scale arrests were made. Bans were imposed on political meetings and processions. Every preparation was made to subdue the people by sheer terror. It was an all-out offensive against the people. Samuel Hoare declared that "there would be no drawn battle this time", and adding insult to injury, said: "though the dogs bark, the caravan passes on".(2)
During the phase that started, the people's struggles assumed different forms. Broadly, they were of two categories: `civil', and what the Congress leaders would describe as `criminal' and try their utmost to prevent.
Civil resisters hoisted the Congress flag, held meetings, brought out processions, raised slogans, picketed foreign cloth and liquor shops -- all defying the authorities -- and courted imprisonment in large numbers. `Boycott foreign cloth' was one of the main slogans. In Bombay the closing of markets by traders was another feature. In a few areas non-payment of revenue and rent and chawkidari tax was attempted: response varied from area to area. In even fewer areas salt was manufactured.
There were other forms of struggle which were more militant and did not forswear violence. There were also some peasant struggles which were not of the satyagrahic type and were led by people thrown up by those struggles.
Between January 1932 and March 1933 there were as many as 120,000 arrests. Firing on unarmed crowds was also resorted to from time to time. Physical torture and intimidation were used by the government on a wide scale to break the morale of the people. Even army units were posted in villages. Prisoners in jails, even women prisoners, were subjected to inhuman torture. Cases of torture, savage beatings, confiscation of property, loot, rapes of women, killings and so on -- illustrative, not exhaustive -- were documented in the Report of the India League delegation which toured India from 17 August to 7 November 1932 as a fact-finding mission. One of the three members of the delegation was Ellen Wilkinson, a former M.P. In the Preface to the Report Bertrand Russell wrote:
"There has been no lack of interest in the misdeeds of the Nazis in Germany, they have been fully reported in the press, and have been commented on with self-righteous indignation. Few people in England realize that misdeeds quite as serious are being perpetrated by the British raj in India."(3)
"To a greater or less degree", wrote Nehru, "all the provinces of India went through this fire of fierce repression, but the Frontier Province and Bengal suffered most."(4)
The NWFP had been in revolt since April 1930. Leaders like Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the `Frontier Gandhi', were in prison. In their anti-imperialist struggle the Red Shirts and other Pathans showed scant respect for the `creed' of non-violence. In the late 1920s the Red Shirts organization (which affiliated itself with the Congress in 1931) came in close contact with the Youth League which was under Communist influence. As an official communique issued on 5 May 1930 said, the members of the Naujawan Bharat Sabha propagated communist doctrines in the villages of Peshawar district. In 1930, after the uprising in the Peshawar city was suppressed, members of the Youth League and the Red Shirts carried on wide propaganda among the peasantry and waged a guerrilla warfare in the rural areas. Of the British-administered districts of the NWFP, the most turbulent was Bannu.
The British responded with savage repressive measures. Troops, tanks and planes were used to suppress the revolt. Yet the people's resistance grew more determined. The number of the Red Shirts increased from 750 to 25,000 within a short time after the arrest of the leaders. By the end of 1930 there were 54,000 men in prison in that small, sparsely-populated province.(5)
Thousands of Pathans from the tribal areas of the province, which enjoyed some local `independence' -- the Waziris, the Afridis, etc. -- marched on Peshawar and other administered areas and attacked British posts. The raj sent machine-guns and tanks to confront them and bombed tribal villages from the air. As the official publication India in 1930-31 said, it was remarkable that "during the course of their numerous incursions into the settled districts, the tribesmen altogether abstained -- except on two occasions -- from looting in their customary manner the villages they passed through" and, during negotiations with the raj, raised "the demands for the release of Gandhi and the repeal of the special ordinances in India".(6) It is significant that 3 May 1930 was observed in Punjab as `Peshawar Day' and that a Sikh detachment from Amritsar set out to help the Pathan rebels but was stopped by the British at Jhelum and 200 of its men were arrested.(7)
Again, in 1931-2 the NWFP played a leading role in the no-tax campaign, which spread to wide areas in the province.
Fierce repression could not suppress the revolt of the tribesmen. They were being regularly bombed from the air by the British. It appears from Gandhi's letters to Agatha Harrison and Nehru, written as late as November 1933, that the flames of struggle in the Frontier province had not died down and atrocities were being committed there by the British even then. Gandhi warned Agatha and Nehru that the cases of atrocities should "be dealt with privately" and should not be given publicity. He said that, since the press was gagged and censorship was strict, the outside world could hardly know anything of what was happening in the different parts of the country. He, too, did not desire that the people should know these dark deeds of the British rulers. He did not "want any public propaganda", he wrote.(8)
In Bengal, the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles did not cease when Gandhi called off civil disobedience in March 1931. The Bengal Provincial Conference at Behrampur (Baharampur), Murshidabad, adopted resolutions in 1931 proposing to intensify the no-tax movement, to boycott Union Boards, British goods, British-owned banks, insurance and steamship companies, Anglo-Indian newspapers, etc.(9)
Thanks mainly to Gandhi and G.D.Birla, Gandhi's man on the spot, the Bengal Congress was disorganized when the second phase of the civil disobedience movement opened. Subhas Bose's anti-imperialist, militant activities did not suit the tastes of Gandhi, "the born co-operator", as he often described himself. During his talks with Irwin in February-March 1931, Gandhi had confided to the Viceroy that "Subhas is my opponent".(10) Since the beginning of the twenties, Gandhi had been trying to establish his undisputed control over the Congress in Bengal as he did in other provinces -- Gujarat, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Andhra, the Central Provinces and Berar, U.P. and so on -- through his deputies like Vallabhbhai Patel, Prasad, Rajagopalachari, Sitaramayya, Jamnalal Bajaj, Jawaharlal Nehru, etc. Jawaharlal did not belong to the Gandhian core in words but followed Gandhi faithfully in deeds until 1946. Gandhi was never deceived by his words. His radicalism in words was of help to Gandhi; with his `left' and `socialist' rhetoric, as S. Gopal, his biographer and admirer, and many others have noted, he was "the best shield of the Congress against left-wing groups and organizations".(11)
In Bengal there were groups of `pure' Gandhians and from 1925, after C.R. Das's death, Gandhi tried to set up J.M. Sen Gupta as his deputy in Bengal, whom in spite of the protests of other Congress leaders of Bengal he gave the `triple crown' -- presidentship of the BPCC, leadership of the Swaraj Party in the Bengal Council, and mayoralty of Calcutta. But neither Sen Gupta, Bidhan Chandra Roy and Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, whom Gandhi cultivated, nor the `pure' Gandhian groups had that popularity among the masses and ordinary Congressmen that Subhas enjoyed. That was a problem for both British imperialism and Gandhi. The former put Subhas behind bars frequently or forced him to go into exile for a considerable period -- about ten years in jail or in exile between 1921 when Subhas returned after resigning from the ICS and January 1941, when he left India never to return. In September 1931 Gandhi asked Subhas to resign as president of the BPCC on the plea that his resignation would put an end to factionalism within the BPCC. The elected president resigned at the behest of Gandhi, together with several others from the provincial committee, and the Sen Gupta group was put in charge of the Bengal Congress. "But Sen Gupta's group", wrote Nehru to Gandhi on 24 September, "is not acting very graciously."(12) Subhas was removed to prison by the raj on 2 January 1932 before civil disobedience was resumed, as he had been before the first phase of it.
Some Congress leaders of Bengal, close to Gandhi like Bidhan Roy and Nalini Sarkar, and Calcutta-based big bourgeois like G.D. Birla, closest to Gandhi and his associates, did not like civil disobedience to flourish. Bidhan Roy served as mayor of Calcutta during much of the period of civil disobedience. Instead of leading or participating in the struggle, Bidhan hauled down the Congress flag from the Calcutta Corporation's buildings at the dictate of Calcutta's police commissioner. According to K.P. Thomas, "From 1925 onwards Bidhan became an intimate friend of Gandhiji". On 30 January 1932 Gandhi wrote to him: "I love and accept your correction and say with you that we are near to each other..."(13)
Bidhan was also very close to G.D. Birla. Birla, who became president of the All India Harijan Sevak Sangh in 1932, nominated him president of its Bengal branch. In India during and after the Second World War, 1939-49 (in Russian: Moscow, 1952, p.220), Dyakov observed that Bengal's Chief Minister B.C. Roy was hand in glove with the Central Government because he was a "stooge of the Marwaris".(14)
Nalini Sarkar's role during the civil disobedience struggle was no less patriotic than Bidhan's. As Nehru wrote, Nalini, who then belonged to "the dominant part of the Bengal Congress", which Gandhi had helped to install, "rejoiced to entertain Government officials, Home Members and the like, when most of us were in prison and C.D. was supposed to be flourishing.... The Congress from top to bottom is a caucus and opportunism triumphs". In July 1934 Sarkar managed to get himself elected as mayor of Calcutta with the support of Government-nominated as well as European councillors of the Calcutta corporation,(15) who were "magnates of Clive Street", the seat of British expatriate capital in India.
But he did not lose the friendship and trust of the top leaders of the Congress. He was very close to G.D. Birla. He was Birla's candidate when he became a member of the Indian Central Banking Inquiry Committee 1929-31.(16) It is quite certain that without Birla's support he could not be elected president of the FICCI in 1933-34.